Category Archives: Bible and Theology

#483: The Song “Give Me a Vision”

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #483, on the subject of The Song “Give Me a Vision”.

And now for something completely different.

One spring in the early to mid teens Pastor Don Chroniger of the Seventh Day Baptist Church in Shiloh asked if I could write a song for him.  He had read a book about vision (not visions), and was loosely planning a sermon series on the subject and wanted a song–something that the choir could sing, but which could also be used as a chorus by the congregation.

I produced this, and made a midi recording, midi piano and midi vocals, to show how the choral version would sound.  I also produced a printable choral sheet music for the choir to use, and a chorus version in the easier key of D for the congregation.  I also did a hymn setting, shown in the image here.  After I had delivered all this, one of those political events happened–I think the church was chosen to host a denominational meeting that fall–and the sermon series was scrubbed, the song put on perpetual hold.  It was never performed; I don’t think copies of the music ever reached the choir, possibly never reached the pianist.  I searched for another chorus or choir to sing it, but my contacts are extremely limited in that area and nothing ever became of it.

However, I still have the music, the words, and this midi recording, and I personally think it’s a powerful song looking for someone to debut it.  It is the nearest I have ever gotten to writing something similar to the works of my favorite twentieth century composer, Randall Thompson, and it sometimes moves me near to tears.  Pastor Don having retired, I don’t expect the sermon series will ever be realized, so their choir probably won’t ever sing this.

Give Me a Vision.

So here are the lyrics.

Give me a vision, let me clearly see
Your perfect plan and what you ask of me.
Your will be done, Lord; let me know my part.
Give me a vision; put it on my heart.

People are dying, lost in the night,
Alone and afraid, and needing your light.
Lord, let your light shine through,
Because the world needs you.

Give me a vision, let me clearly see
Your perfect plan and what you ask of me.
Your will be done, Lord; let me know my part.
Give me a vision; put it on my heart.

Christians are fighting, caught in our pride,
United in Christ, we choose to divide.
Lord, let your love break through,
Because the church needs you.

Give me a vision, let me clearly see
Your perfect plan and what you ask of me.
Your will be done, Lord; let me know my part.
Give me a vision; put it on my heart.

I am a sinner, not knowing why.
To enter your kingdom I need to die.
Please let your life come through,
Because, Lord, I need you.

Give me a vision, let me clearly see
Your perfect plan and what you ask of me.
Your will be done, Lord; let me know my part.
Give me a vision; put it on my heart.

*****

Previous web log song posts:

#301:  The Song “Holocaust” | #307:  The Song “Time Bomb” | #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal” | #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods” | #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe” | #320:  The Song “Free” | #322:  The Song “Voices” | #326:  The Song “Mountain, Mountain” | #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice” | #334:  The Song “Convinced” | #337:  The Song “Selfish Love” | #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul” | #341:  The Song “Joined Together” | #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them” | #349: The Song “I Can’t Resist You’re Love” | #353:  The Song “I Use to Think” | #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good” | #362:  The Song “My Life to You” | #366:  The Song “Sometimes” | #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom” | #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy” | #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice” | #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good” | #393:  The Song “Why” | #399:  The Song “Look Around You” | #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command” | #408:  The Song “Given You My Name” | #412:  The Song “When I Think” | #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me” | #428:  The Song “To the Victor” | #433:  The Song “From Job” | #436:  The Song “Trust Him Again” | #438:  The Song “Even You” | #441:  The Song “Fork in the Road” | #442:  The Song “Call to Worship” | #445:  The Song “How Many Times” | #447:  The Song “When I Was Lonely” | #450:  The Song “Rainy Days” | #453:  The Song “Never Alone” | #455:  The Song “King of Glory” | #457:  The Song “Greater Love” | #458:  The Song “All I Need” | #462:  The Song “John Three” | #464:  The Song “The Secret” | #466:  The Song “In a Mirror Dimly” | #468:  The Song “Present Your Bodies” | #471:  The Song “Walkin'” | #473:  The Song “In the Light of His Love” | #477:  The Song “Step by Step” | #479:  The Song “They That Trust” | #481:  The Song “To the Philadelphians”

479: The Song “They That Trust”

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #479, on the subject of The Song “They That Trust”.

The only reason I recorded this song is that when I wrote it I wanted to have a version I could play for Tyler Chroniger.  Becky Patterson had just joined 7db, and I really wrote this to feature her singing.  Tyler didn’t care for it, and I think Becky never heard it.

I expect that part of the problem is that this vocals over midi instruments recording is not very good.  Shame on me, I think I psyched myself out, because I had written the top vocal for Becky and therefore imagined that it was high.  It was only an A, and I sang that high all the time comfortably, but because I was thinking in terms of her singing it, I struggled for it.  On the other hand, I’ve never been able to decide whether I like the song.  The guitar and bass interaction is supposed to give it something of a rock sound, but it comes across as very much a pop song, I think.

They That Trust.

So here are the lyrics.

Oh, they that trust in the Lord,
Oh, they that trust in the Lord shall renew,
Oh, they that trust in the Lord, shall renew their strength.
And they shall mount up on wings,
And they shall mount up on wings of eagles,
And they shall mount up on wings, mount on eagle’s wings.

Oh, they that trust in the Lord,
Oh, they that trust in the Lord shall renew,
Oh, they that trust in the Lord shall renew their love.
And they shall love each other,
And they shall love each other as He loved,
And they shall love each other as He first loved us.

Trust in the Lord, not your own understanding–
That is the place to start.
Follow the way that the Lord is commanding.
Trust Him with all your heart.

Oh, they that trust in the Lord,
Oh, they that trust in the Lord shall renew,
Oh, they that trust in the Lord shall renew their joy.
And they shall sing His praises,
And they shall sing His praises forever,
And they shall sing His praises–sing forever more.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

*****

Previous web log song posts:

#301:  The Song “Holocaust” | #307:  The Song “Time Bomb” | #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal” | #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods” | #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe” | #320:  The Song “Free” | #322:  The Song “Voices” | #326:  The Song “Mountain, Mountain” | #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice” | #334:  The Song “Convinced” | #337:  The Song “Selfish Love” | #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul” | #341:  The Song “Joined Together” | #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them” | #349: The Song “I Can’t Resist You’re Love” | #353:  The Song “I Use to Think” | #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good” | #362:  The Song “My Life to You” | #366:  The Song “Sometimes” | #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom” | #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy” | #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice” | #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good” | #393:  The Song “Why” | #399:  The Song “Look Around You” | #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command” | #408:  The Song “Given You My Name” | #412:  The Song “When I Think” | #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me” | #428:  The Song “To the Victor” | #433:  The Song “From Job” | #436:  The Song “Trust Him Again” | #438:  The Song “Even You” | #441:  The Song “Fork in the Road” | #442:  The Song “Call to Worship” | #445:  The Song “How Many Times” | #447:  The Song “When I Was Lonely” | #450:  The Song “Rainy Days” | #453:  The Song “Never Alone” | #455:  The Song “King of Glory” | #457:  The Song “Greater Love” | #458:  The Song “All I Need” | #462:  The Song “John Three” | #464:  The Song “The Secret” | #466:  The Song “In a Mirror Dimly” | #468:  The Song “Present Your Bodies” | #471:  The Song “Walkin'” | #473:  The Song “In the Light of His Love” | #477:  The Song “Step by Step”

Next song: To the Philadelphians.

#477: The Song “Step by Step”

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #477, on the subject of The Song “Step by Step”.

This is undoubtedly the longest song yet published, and I do not anticipate posting a longer one.  Yet it is a good old-style rock song with an interesting story behind it.  The dramatic opening moves into the slow pounding forward movement which eventually segues through gentle voices into the frantic cadenza building to a climax that brings it back to the beginning, and a denouement capturing the first part as the last.

Part of that story was already told in web log post #462:  John Three (linked below).  There I tell about how Jeffrey Robert Zurheide and I started writing a rock opera.  This song is primarily sung by the commander of the soldiers who nailed Jesus to the cross, although there are parts (in very operatic style) attributed to John the Baptist and the Prophets and to The Church.  It also contains several instrumental stretches including a drum solo, although this recording is another vocals over midi instruments work.  Although I wrote it alone, I incorporated scraps of melody from at least one piece that Jeffrey had written, the Carpenter’s Song melody at the end.

My impetus for recording it was that a paper copy of the lyrics with chords would not preserve the intricacy at all.  When I originally wrote it, at Gordon College probably in the spring of 1976, I recorded it in my dorm room using a Sony reel-to-reel deck that let me record one channel while playing the other, but that tape had been lost, so having the software to do so I reproduced it.  I have often thought that the second half of the section given to the Voice of the Church should break into SATB, but I’ve never taken the time to draft that.

It has a lot of excellent images, although at least one part I always liked turns out to be historically inaccurate (they did not drop crosses into sockets; they nailed criminals to the crossbar and hoisted it onto the scaffold, then affixed the feet).  But the picture of the steps throbbing in the brain of the soldier, the phrase “Jesus walked to the cross” suggesting that it was voluntary, and the notion of the earthquake waiting for Him to nod His head as a cue, have always struck me as gems.  (I had probably heard the notion that walking to the cross was voluntary before this, but it was worth including.)

When I played it for Jeff, he was thrown at the end, because when I sang “Today we killed a carpenter” he thought it was the carpenter he’d invented at the beginning who, in fairness, I’d brought back into the story in the song sung by Caiaphas.  I thought that connecting the carpenters together gave some cohesion to the song.

Step by Step.

So here are the lyrics.

(John the Baptist and the Prophets)

Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

(Soldier)

Step by step He walked to the hill.
His shredded back was bleeding still.
Step by step He carried the cross;
I felt so helpless, so blind, so lost.

Step by step He plodded along,
This man in whom we found nothing wrong.
Step by step He came to die.
I had the feeling only He knew why.

Somehow I think He died for me;
Can’t you see, He took my place?
I should have been nailed to that tree;
Instead, I spit in His face.

Somehow I think He died for me;
Can’t you see, He took my place?
I should have been nailed to that tree;
Instead, I spit in His face.

Step by step–it stays with me yet.
This was a man like none I had met.
Step by step, it throbs in my brain.
How could this man bear so much pain?

(Voice of the Church)

And Jesus walked to the cross–
He didn’t have to do it,
But He thought of me
As He faced that tree,
And for my life He went through it.
Jesus walked to the cross–
One little word would have saved Him,
But His love was why
Jesus chose to die.
The cross was mine, but He gave Himself for me.

He died for me.  (Repeat and under)

(Soldier)

Somehow I think He died for me;
Can’t you see, He took my place?
I should have been nailed to that tree;
Instead, I spit in His face.
I felt so guilty as I watched Him walk along,
And He was still alive–He must have been remarkably strong,
But any minute I was sure that He would fall–
We beat Him so hard, I’m surprised He walked at all–
And so I grabbed a man who stood beside the road
And made him carry Jesus’ awful, awful, awful load,
And made him carry Jesus’ awful load, but what can I say?
I thought I was the one who should have led the way
To take the cross, to die myself, to set Him free,
To bear the cross on which this Jesus died for me.
The cross He bore–I felt it was my own,
But one man just can’t stand alone
Against the people and against the rulers at the top
And tell them all they’re wrong, tell them to stop, stop, stop, stop, stop–

Stop this madness, stop this madness,
Can’t you see you’re plunging us in darkness and sadness?
But still we nailed Him to the cross, and dropped it in the socket,
And grumbled that His garment didn’t have a pocket;
But I did give Him a drink before He died.
When He was dead, I plunged my sword in his side,
I don’t know why–somehow I knew that He was dead.
When He died, He prayed, then He dropped His head,
Then came the earthquake, yes, it seems it waited for His nod.
Surely this man had to be the Son of God.
Oh, tell me Jesus, tell me, please tell me why,
Why did we hate you, why did we beat you, why did we crucify?

(John the Baptist and the Prophets)

Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

(Soldier)
Today we killed a carpenter–I guess I don’t know why.
Can someone tell me why this Jesus had to die?
He’d been a nuisance, and we’d fin’ly had enough.
But for a righteous man, we sure did treat Him rough.
We bit and spit on Him, we acted just like swine,
And yet it seemed that He forgave us for our crime.
I meant to ask Him to explain some things He’d said.
I’m kind of sorry that the carpenter is dead.

(All)

Step by step.

*****

Previous web log song posts:

#301:  The Song “Holocaust” | #307:  The Song “Time Bomb” | #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal” | #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods” | #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe” | #320:  The Song “Free” | #322:  The Song “Voices” | #326:  The Song “Mountain, Mountain” | #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice” | #334:  The Song “Convinced” | #337:  The Song “Selfish Love” | #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul” | #341:  The Song “Joined Together” | #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them” | #349: The Song “I Can’t Resist You’re Love” | #353:  The Song “I Use to Think” | #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good” | #362:  The Song “My Life to You” | #366:  The Song “Sometimes” | #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom” | #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy” | #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice” | #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good” | #393:  The Song “Why” | #399:  The Song “Look Around You” | #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command” | #408:  The Song “Given You My Name” | #412:  The Song “When I Think” | #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me” | #428:  The Song “To the Victor” | #433:  The Song “From Job” | #436:  The Song “Trust Him Again” | #438:  The Song “Even You” | #441:  The Song “Fork in the Road” | #442:  The Song “Call to Worship” | #445:  The Song “How Many Times” | #447:  The Song “When I Was Lonely” | #450:  The Song “Rainy Days” | #453:  The Song “Never Alone” | #455:  The Song “King of Glory” | #457:  The Song “Greater Love” | #458:  The Song “All I Need” | #462:  The Song “John Three” | #464:  The Song “The Secret” | #466:  The Song “In a Mirror Dimly” | #468:  The Song “Present Your Bodies” | #471:  The Song “Walkin'” | #473:  The Song “In the Light of His Love”

Next song: They That Trust

#475: The Mother of Jairus’ Daughter

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #475, on the subject of The Mother of Jairus’ Daughter.

Our Christian Gamers Guild Bible study recently reached Mark 5:22ff, a peculiar passage which begins with Jesus agreeing to go with someone to perform one miracle, healing a dying daughter, and on the way being interrupted to perform another, healing a bleeding woman.  I proposed that the two miracles were more than simply together, that they were connected, and the connection appeared to be that the woman was the mother of the girl.  Someone rightly asked what evidence there was for this, and I realized that would require pulling together a lot of little bits and pieces that might not be significant in themselves but which seem to point to something.

The Raising of Jairus’ Daughter exhibited 1820 Henry Thomson 1773-1843 Presented anonymously 2012 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T13558

In this, it also happened by one of those intriguing coincidences that while I was posting the Mark passage I was simultaneously studying the Luke passage which should post in a couple years; the Matthew passage has already been outlined for posting, so I have been to some degree comparing that in the process.  I thus decided that I ought to put it all together and offer it to you.

I’ll also mention that I did not notice this myself.  One of the most intelligent people I know, the Reverend (now undoubtedly Doctor) David D. Oldham (whom I have known since high school) pointed it out to me.  However, our discussion of it was considerably less detailed, and he left it to me to examine those details.

  1. The fact that we have nested miracles at all is itself unique.  This is the only place in the New Testament where one miracle occurs inside the other.  We might write that off to narrative style, but that all three Synoptic Gospels include the account nested like this–not one of them separates this into two distinct events.
  2. The two miracles are connected by the statement of twelve years.  We are told that the girl was twelve years old in Mark 5:42 and in Luke 8:42; we are similarly told that the woman had been having this flow of blood for twelve years in Mark 5:25, Matthew 9:20, and Luke 8:43.  The juxtaposition in Luke of the two statements being in consecutive verses suggests that he recognized the significance.  Matthew omits the age of the girl, but he truncates the story significantly so although his omission weakens the case, it doesn’t negate it.
  3. The presence of this number is the more significant when you recognize that this story of the dying girl is the only occasion on which we are told the age of the person afflicted.  There were other occasions on which Jesus healed or delivered children, but their age was never given.  That it is given here suggests that it matters.  Yet the only obvious way in which it matters is that it matches the other number.
  4. It is also made more significant in that we are never otherwise told how long someone was afflicted, except in cases in which it was from birth.  Our woman has had this problem for the same length of time that the child has been alive–that is, she has had it since the birth of the child.
  5. The affliction itself probably escapes our attention, because when we, particularly we gentile men, read that she has had a flow of blood for an extended time we don’t immediately connect that to continual vaginal bleeding–yet that must be what it was.  Further, it is not at all uncommon for women to develop extended vaginal bleeding post-partum, and so if she had given birth twelve years ago and was still bleeding, that would be an ailment that would totally disrupt her life but would not be rapidly fatal.
  6. It is also noteworthy that we are told that the man is a principle leader of the synagogue, in Mark 5:22 and Luke 8:41 both of which give his name; the truncated Matthew account says only that he is a leader in 9:18.  However, the fact that he is named–another very unusual feature of the miracle accounts–suggests that the writers expect at least some of the readers to recognize his name.
  7. This fact that he was such a leader would mean that if this is his wife and the mother of his daughter she would have to have been put out of the house–contact with a woman with continual vaginal bleeding would make him continually unclean and unable to perform his duties at the synagogue.  Thus we find her living on the street, even though she once had the means to pay doctors in an effort to solve the problem.  The family has been separated for most of twelve years, the daughter growing up without her mother.
  8. On that, the story of the girl is split in two parts by the story of the woman, and in the first part only her father Jairus is mentioned.  The mother joins the story only after the healing of the woman when Jesus takes her inside with Him in Luke 8:51 and in Mark 5:40.  Luke 8:56 repeats the recognition of the presence of the mother by saying He gave the girl to her parents.
  9. Both of those accounts tell us that when Jesus arrived at the house and went in to see the girl, the mother entered the house with Him.  Why was she not already in the house, at the bedside of her dying daughter?  We might suppose that she had been waiting outside for her husband to return with news about the healer, but it’s a better fit if we see her coming to the house with Jesus and the others because she is the mother who has been excluded from the home for all these years due to her ailment.
  10. It is a very minor point, but all three accounts initially identify the woman with the greek word γυνὴ, which is a tricky word in Greek because of the culture of the time.  It literally means a “woman”.  However, it was the word automatically used to identify a “wife”.  Thus each time the word “woman” appears in the passage it could mean “wife”, that on the way Jesus met a wife, and healed the wife, and the wife told of her affliction and her healing.  It is not conclusive, but it is noteworthy.
  11. It might be argued that after the healing of the woman Jesus told her to leave–but the text does not say that.  In Mark 8:34 he tells her to “retire into peace”, which might mean that she should leave but might rather mean that she should leave her fears behind because she is now healed.  Similarly in Luke 8:48 the statement is “travel into peace”, which could have that meaning, or could mean that she should continue her journey without fear.  That journey might reasonably be taking her home.  Matthew has no statement telling her to leave, only reassurance of her healing.
  12. In all three accounts Jesus makes a point of identifying the woman who was healed.  It is very dramatic covering several verses in both Mark and Luke, but even Matthew makes the point that He found her in the crowd and identified her.  That might have been solely for her benefit, but it makes sense for Him to identify the woman if indeed she is the mother of the girl and her husband has to be aware that she has now been healed and can return to the home.
  13. The fact that Matthew 9:22 tells us that the cure was permanent strongly suggests that the woman did not vanish into the crowd, but that someone was still in contact with her over the years to come.  We aren’t told who she was specifically, but this detail suggests that she must have been someone known within the community, and someone for whom if the condition returned the community would know, which would apply to the wife of the synagogue leader.
  14. On the whole, if the woman is the wife of the synagogue leader and mother of the girl, then this is not one story tucked inside an unrelated other, but the story of Jesus restoring a family, bringing the mother back into the home and saving the life of the daughter.  It is a theory that gives us a whole picture here.

Thus I contend that the woman healed of her bleeding in the middle of the story of the healing of the daughter of the synagogue leader is the mother of the child, the estranged wife of the synagogue leader, being restored to her place in the home as the life of her daughter is saved.

There is a second issue in this passage worth comment (also pointed out to me by the aforementioned David Oldham).  All three accounts tell us that the people at the house believed the girl had died.  Interpreters generally conclude that they were right, that the girl had died and Jesus here restores her to life.  The problem is that Jesus insists that the girl is not dead but sleeping.  He is reported to have said this in Matthew 9:24, Mark 5:39, and Luke 8:52.  We, though, ignore what Jesus said and assume that He was being metaphorical.

Does the context otherwise support this?  It does not say that Jesus restored her to life.  In Matthew 9:25 the verb is that He lifted her, sometimes rendered raised but meaning no more than that He helped her to her feet.  In Mark 5:41 the statement is given in Aramaic but then translated to Greek, the verb here meaning to raise yourself, often used of awakening.  That same Greek verb is used in Luke 8:54.  Both of these verbs are sometimes used metaphorically for awakening the dead, and might be being so used here, but they do not prove the girl was dead rather than comatose.  It is also significant that the Aramaic verb used by Mark does not mean to awaken but to stand, which might again indicate that Jesus believed her to be alive.

Luke 8:55 uses the idiomatic phrase “her spirit returned”, which might be taken to mean that her spirit had left and she was dead.  However, Greek usage suggested that when someone slept their spirit went on a brief trip elsewhere, and that it returned when they awoke, so again we have something inconclusive.

Thus we cannot genuinely prove whether the girl was alive or dead when Jesus reached her, but as my friend suggests on this point we should probably believe what Jesus says.  After all, He seems quite adamant about it.

473: The Song “In the Light of His Love”

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #473, on the subject of The Song “In the Light of His Love”.

This might be the oldest song on the list; it’s probably also the shortest, at least so far.  (I have a couple of very short songs that I never sing, but might figure out how to record sometime.)  Working with a few others back around 1970 plus or minus a year under the name Genuine Junk Parts (with Art Robbins, my brother Roy Young, and Andy Nilssen handling the recording), I put together a collection under the title Genuine Junk Lives in Ramsey, but decided not to try to sell copies because I was worried about copyrights.  Yeah, I was a kid.  This song wrapped up the tape, and is, I think, the only song from that collection that I’ve ever sung publicly since forming The Last Psalm, although there is one other that I’ve tried to remember from time to time.

It was also the last song I recorded for the vocals-over-midi-instruments discs I created for Dave Oldham, because it was a song performed occasionally by The Last Psalm (and at least once before that by BLT Down when we did a church service).  I sing it occasionally to close concerts, and think of it as a benediction.  After all, it’s short–under a minute, forty seconds in this recording.

My wife always comments that she likes the way I rhymed “God’s Son” with “person”.  It’s a very simple song, but then, it’s not really long enough to get that complicated.  I don’t recall anyone else ever commenting on it.

In the Light of His Love.

So here are the lyrics.

The Lord will select you,
Direct you, protect you.
He’ll stay beside you
To hide you or guide you.
He’ll always lead you
And he’ll always feed you,
So stay in the light of His love.

You know that you need Him,
So hear Him and heed Him,
For Jesus is God’s son,
And no normal person.
He’s never far from you
Once He has won you,
So stay in the light of His love.

*****

Previous web log song posts:

#301:  The Song “Holocaust” | #307:  The Song “Time Bomb” | #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal” | #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods” | #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe” | #320:  The Song “Free” | #322:  The Song “Voices” | #326:  The Song “Mountain, Mountain” | #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice” | #334:  The Song “Convinced” | #337:  The Song “Selfish Love” | #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul” | #341:  The Song “Joined Together” | #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them” | #349: The Song “I Can’t Resist You’re Love” | #353:  The Song “I Use to Think” | #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good” | #362:  The Song “My Life to You” | #366:  The Song “Sometimes” | #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom” | #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy” | #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice” | #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good” | #393:  The Song “Why” | #399:  The Song “Look Around You” | #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command” | #408:  The Song “Given You My Name” | #412:  The Song “When I Think” | #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me” | #428:  The Song “To the Victor” | #433:  The Song “From Job” | #436:  The Song “Trust Him Again” | #438:  The Song “Even You” | #441:  The Song “Fork in the Road” | #442:  The Song “Call to Worship” | #445:  The Song “How Many Times” | #447:  The Song “When I Was Lonely” | #450:  The Song “Rainy Days” | #453:  The Song “Never Alone” | #455:  The Song “King of Glory” | #457:  The Song “Greater Love” | #458:  The Song “All I Need” | #462:  The Song “John Three” | #464:  The Song “The Secret” | #466:  The Song “In a Mirror Dimly” | #468:  The Song “Present Your Bodies” | #471:  The Song “Walkin'”

Next song: Step by Step

469: Church History

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #469, on the subject of Church History.

This title is overblown.  About fifteen years ago I did a twenty-three part series at the Christian Gamers Guild Chaplain’s Bible Study about Church History, which at the time I thoroughly researched and still had to be corrected on a few points, and I’m not doing that research again now and not even re-reading that series.  But I was asked a question, and I’m going to attempt to muddle through an answer which I hope is adequate.

The questioner asks me such questions periodically, and sometimes I address them on Facebook, but when they get complicated I resort to writing posts for this weblog.  This time the question reads:

I’m confused so I turn to you for enlightenment.  Even when I was Protestant I had no idea between charismatics and Pentecostals and Calvinists.  They seem to fight a lot according to these so called faith based preachers that are on my video feed.  I enjoy listening to them for purely entertainment purposes because frankly, they tell me nothing other than their dislike for the other.  Maybe you could shed some light.

For background, the questioner was raised Lutheran, attended a Lutheran Bible college briefly and became serious about Christian faith when he played in a Christian band.  He converted to Roman Catholicism to accommodate his second wife, and has studied the beliefs of that church more intently than he had studied Protestantism generally or Lutheranism specifically.  Most of that is outside the parameters of the question anyway, but it might help the reader to understand my starting point.

It probably isn’t much use to understand the origins of the Reformation, but I find it at least interesting.  We actually start in England with Wycliff, who put forward the idea that ordinary people should have access to the text of the Bible in their own language.  The Catholic Church opposed this concept, because it was felt that uneducated people reading the Bible in versions that were not the original text or Latin translations rendered by persons who had been identified as “Saints” would get wrong ideas and teach them to others–and there was by this time a long history of heresies started by reasonably educated and scholarly people who read the Bible and got wrong ideas from it, so there was some reason for concern.  Wycliff was far enough from Rome to survive scrutiny, and his message managed to reach a man in Czechoslovakia named Hus.  He wrote a few things that the church didn’t particularly like, but he didn’t actually cross any lines, and his teachings were preserved within the monastic orders for consideration.  They thus reached a young monk named Martin Luther, who found them enlightening and realized that there were some problems with what the church was teaching and doing at that time, so he wrote a list of problems he thought the church should discuss, his ninety-five theses.  He posted a copy on the front door of his church in Germany, as announcements of local interest were generally promulgated, and mailed copies to a few friends around Europe.  One of those friends had access to a Gutenberg moveable type printing press, untested technology at the time, and made many copies of this, which then flooded Europe, and what was supposed to be a starting point for discussion became a battle line for division.

I believe that everyone is wrong about something, including me; a major point of study is to identify my own errors and correct them, which I have done repeatedly over the decades as I refine my understanding of what scripture actually teaches.  A corollary to that is every denomination holds a fundamental error in its doctrine, and this appears at the Reformation.

Whether or not it was official, the perceived message of the Catholic Church was that to get into heaven you had to be sinlessly perfect.  To achieve sinless perfection, you had to be forgiven, and divine forgiveness was mediated through the church.  Thus you confessed your sins to priests who gave you absolution, and usually prescribed penance–good deeds you should do to earn that forgiveness.  Probably that would have been stated as demonstrating that you deserve it, but it’s not very different in concept.  Because of this Last Rites are extremely important, because before you die you must confess all the sins you undoubtedly committed since your last confession, or you will have to pay for them in Purgatory or even go to Hell.  This led to abuses–if the church mediates forgiveness, you can be given forgiveness for wrongs you have not yet committed, and thus the sale of indulgences had become popular, the church prospectively forgiving sins you planned to commit in exchange for substantial gifts you gave to the church.

Luther rejected these ideas.  Forgiveness, he argued, was not earned but given freely, paid for by the sacrifice of Jesus.  It was given to everyone who had faith, and the church had no control over that.  Calvin agreed with this–but then they had a problem.  They were determined that in their understanding Christianity was never about doing something to earn your salvation–works–but entirely about faith, but it struck them that if you had to choose to have faith, then faith was something you did, and therefore a work, and they were back where they started with using faith to earn salvation, something that was a gift and could not be earned.  They each resolved this in a different way.

As an aside, I think this is where the Reformers made their error.  Later denominations have argued in essence that faith, a choice, is not a work, an act, and thus you can choose to trust God and so be saved without that counting as a good work that you did.  Strict Reformation Christians criticize this as “Decision Theology”, that you get to choose whether to believe, because the solution to the faith-is-works problem that the Reformers gave is that you don’t choose to believe, God chooses to give you faith, to cause you to believe.  In support of this, Ephesians 2:8f is frequently cited, reading (in the American Standard Version) for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man should glory.  The error here is thinking that the “that” refers to the faith, but “that” is neuter and needs a neuter referent, and both “faith” and “grace” are feminine, so the “gift”, which is neuter, has to be the focus of the statement, the salvation which is given by grace and received through faith.

However, working from the assumption that faith had to be a gift, Calvin deduced, logically, that God decided who would and would not be saved, entirely arbitrarily, and individuals had no choice in the matter–either God saved you, or he didn’t.  This gives us the “Five Points of Calvinism”, which in English are recalled by the mnemonic “TULIP”:

  1. Total Depravity, that people are too corrupt ever to be able to do anything genuinely good on their own;
  2. Unconditional Election, that God makes his choice without reference to anything about us;
  3. Limited Atonement, that Jesus didn’t die for everyone but only for those God chose to save;
  4. Irresistible Grace, that if you have been chosen you cannot fail to believe;
  5. Perseverance of the Saints, that those who are actually divinely chosen will persevere to the end and so be saved.

Thus Calvin’s answer was that God arbitrarily decides who will be saved, forces those people to have faith, saves them, and condemns everyone else.  This is strict Calvinism.  Luther, by contrast, resolved the matter with an irrational solution:  God offers to give everyone faith to believe, and if you accept that faith it’s no credit to you, but you can reject it, in which case you are responsible for your own damnation.

The churches which call themselves “Reformed”, “Calvinist”, or “Presbyterian” generally follow Calvin’s schema, although as I read in a booklet by Catholics explaining Presbyterianism, most members of such churches are more interested in whether they are following Jesus than whether they are following Calvin.  It is also followed by some Baptist denominations, but others follow the line of Arminius, who attempted to correct Calvinism’s strict double-predestination system (you are predestined to be saved or predestined to be lost), which led to decision theology, adopted by many Baptists and most of the Evangelical movement.  It should be noted that there are Calvinist Evangelists, whose motivations are first that evangelism is commanded and second that we don’t know whom God is going to save so we have to present the message to everyone.

So we’re almost halfway there–these are the Calvinists.  They are distinguished from earlier Catholics by the belief that salvation is entirely by grace through faith with no relation to works, and from later Evangelical denominations by the belief that people really don’t have a choice but are chosen and given faith without reference to their own feelings about the matter.

We now have to move through a few centuries and a couple of “Great Awakenings” in which new denominations such as the Baptists and the Methodists arose, to get to the end of what some call the Third Great Awakening (others object that there are only two), involving Moody and Finney.  In the wake of this there were strange events, among them healings, visions, and ecstatic speech.  The concept developed that some people went beyond being saved to being “baptized in the Holy Spirit”.  This was the foundation of the Pentecostal movement, which led to the creation of several Pentecostal denominations united by a recognition of this “second” experience and manifestations of Spirit involvement, most notably speaking in tongues.

Established denominations in which this was not a reality could not accept the notion that there was “more of God than you know”.  Whatever this new experience was, it couldn’t be of God, because the established churches all believed that there was nothing else God was doing in the world that they didn’t have.  In fact, all of them had theological explanations for why these didn’t exist–they were limited to the capital-S Saints, or they ceased at the end of the first century as the New Testament replaced them, or the references actually are to natural gifts like preaching and translation and medical skills.  The Pentecostals couldn’t be called heretics because they maintained all the essentials of orthodox docrine, but many denominations believed that the supposed supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit were demonic.  Pentecostalism was thus marginalized for the first half of the twentieth century.

Sometime around 1960, plus or minus a few years, small numbers of members of traditional denominations became involved with Pentecostals (probably due to the ecumenical movement) and brought concepts of Pentecostalism back to their churches.  Beginning with the Catholics, these groups were called “charismatic” from the Greek “charisma”, a gift of divine grace.  Many of these groups “received the left foot of fellowship” from their churches, but by 1970 there were established “charismatic movements” in all the major denominations (Baptists were generally the holdout), but there were also independent fellowships built on charismatic theology that were evolving into churches.  They tend to blend Pentecostal experience with more traditional church practices, peculiarly mostly the Baptist practices and beliefs, probably because the Baptists were most resistant to accepting the Charismatics as a genuine move of God.  However, there are Charismatic churches in most denominations, and Charismatic groups in many churches that are affiliated with traditional denominations.

Calvinists generally believe that Evangelicals are wrong about the ability to choose to have faith, and thus they are against Pentecostal and Charismatic beliefs because of that, but also because of a belief that all the miraculous manifestations of the Spirit are relegated to the first century.  Pentecostals and Charismatics criticize Calvinists for failure to recognize that people can choose to have faith, and for excluding the power of God from their religion.  Pentecostals criticize Charismatics for trying to “pour new wine into old wineskins”, saying that the new move of God won’t work in the old churches, and Charismatics criticize Pentecostals for throwing out the baby with the bathwater, that is, overlooking that there is much in the denominational traditions that has value and should be preserved.

All of that is a bit simplistic, and indeed there are Calvinist Pentecostals and Charismatic Calvinists.  Most Pentecostals and Charismatics are Evangelicals, but not all.  Many Pentecostals and Charismatics fellowship together.  However, as has been observed by others, the closer any two groups are to each other, the more emphasis they put on their differences.

I hope that helps.

468: The Song “Present Your Bodies”

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #468, on the subject of The Song “Present Your Bodies”.

Identifying when I wrote this song is a bit tricky, but I have a few clues.

In May or June of 1975, shortly after The Last Psalm played its last concert and just before I was invited to join Jacob’s Well, I wrote a song called Walkin’; that song is slated for next month, simply by a sort of random roll, but it is relevant here, because this song is like that one in structural ways of which I was always aware–indeed, I think they were intentional–but which might not be obvious to the casual listener.  Unfortunately, you won’t be able to hear the other song until next month, unless of course you’ve arrived late, in which case the link to it should be at the bottom of this page.

The similarities are related to the fact that the “bridge” is marked by a significant key change which changes the feel of the music, and it is repeated such that it launches out of both the chorus and the verse.  Both songs have three verses, multiple repetitions of a chorus, and as mentioned a repeated bridge.  It was a formula that worked perhaps better for the other song than it did for this one, and I rarely sang it for that reason; it was lengthy and repetitious, and I was never certain it held the attention of the audience.  I rarely sang the other, either, but that was for different reasons to be addressed next month.

I suppose the similarities end there.  This song is considerably slower and more somber than the other, and its power comes from a slow drive and potent words.  The lyrics are entirely quoted or paraphrased from scripture in this song, while that one is more a narration of a poetic salvation message.

My other major clue is that in the summer of 1977 I was using a small studio at Gordon College to record a few songs (those tapes, alas, long lost), and this was one of them.  That gives me a window during which this was created.

This is another vocals-over-midi-instruments recording.  Again its simplicity helps support a decent recording, although there is a technical hiccough in the midi at one point.

Present Your Bodies.

So here are the lyrics.

Brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of God,
Present your bodies a living sacrifice.
Set aside the sin that oh, so easily besets you.
Forget the past, and press on toward the prize.

Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord
With all humility, with gentleness,
With patience.
Always be diligent in striving to preseve your unity
In peace.

Brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of God,
Present your bodies a living sacrifice.
Set aside the sin that oh, so easily besets you.
Forget the past, and press on toward the prize.

Count it joy when you suffer for the Lord,
And thank Him that He finds you worthy
To serve Him.
He will reward those who continue praising through their suffering
For Him.

When He comes back again
He will repay
Each one according to his deeds.
When you are serving Him
Day after day,
He will provide for all your needs.

Brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of God,
Present your bodies a living sacrifice.
Set aside the sin that oh, so easily besets you.
Forget the past, and press on toward the prize.

Place your whole life solely in His hands.
He’s working all things for His glory
And our good.
He’ll finish ev’ryone in whom He has begun salvation.
Amen.

Brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of God,
Present your bodies a living sacrifice.
Set aside the sin that oh, so easily besets you.
Forget the past, and press on toward the prize.

When He comes back again
He will repay
Each one according to his deeds.
When you are serving Him
Day after day,
He will provide for all your needs.

He’ll finish ev’ryone in whom He has begun salvation.
Amen.

*****

Previous web log song posts:

#301:  The Song “Holocaust” | #307:  The Song “Time Bomb” | #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal” | #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods” | #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe” | #320:  The Song “Free” | #322:  The Song “Voices” | #326:  The Song “Mountain, Mountain” | #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice” | #334:  The Song “Convinced” | #337:  The Song “Selfish Love” | #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul” | #341:  The Song “Joined Together” | #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them” | #349: The Song “I Can’t Resist You’re Love” | #353:  The Song “I Use to Think” | #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good” | #362:  The Song “My Life to You” | #366:  The Song “Sometimes” | #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom” | #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy” | #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice” | #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good” | #393:  The Song “Why” | #399:  The Song “Look Around You” | #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command” | #408:  The Song “Given You My Name” | #412:  The Song “When I Think” | #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me” | #428:  The Song “To the Victor” | #433:  The Song “From Job” | #436:  The Song “Trust Him Again” | #438:  The Song “Even You” | #441:  The Song “Fork in the Road” | #442:  The Song “Call to Worship” | #445:  The Song “How Many Times” | #447:  The Song “When I Was Lonely” | #450:  The Song “Rainy Days” | #453:  The Song “Never Alone” | #455:  The Song “King of Glory” | #457:  The Song “Greater Love” | #458:  The Song “All I Need” | #462:  The Song “John Three” | #464:  The Song “The Secret” | #466:  The Song “In a Mirror Dimly”

Next song: Walkin’

466: The Song “In a Mirror Dimly”

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #466, on the subject of The Song “In a Mirror Dimly”.

I remember exactly where I was when I wrote this song, and what inspired it.

I was dating Sue Adams my freshman college year, and in June, 1974, right after school was dismissed for the summer, we spent a few days at her home on Staten Island.  She lived in a duplex, and her grandparents, who had shared the other half of the building, had died that spring.  Thus I was given one of the vacant bedrooms in the otherwise empty half.  There was an old mirror, the sort that was losing its silver and so had an imperfect reflection, leaning against the wall near the bed, and I had my guitar handy when I awoke.  The mirror reminded me of the passage in I Corinthians 13, so the words of this song came to be.

I remember stretching a bit for the second verse, looking for something else that gave a weak reflection, and the storefront window was the only thing that came to me.  The third verse stepped out of the mold, but was still about something we would see that would, in a sense, reflect the image of God.

I was never overly fond of the song; it felt a bit strained to me.  However, others like it, particularly my wife.  I performed it with The Last Psalm in the 74-75 year, and so I included it in the recordings I made for Dave and Jes Oldham.

This is another vocals-over-midi-instruments recording.  It is rather good, probably because it is simple.

In a Mirror Dimly.

So here are the lyrics.

In a mirror dimly we can see His face.
He is God most holy; His image we can trace,
But oh, what an image–
It scares me to think that someday
I may see Him!  I may see Him!

In a storefront window we buy our peace.
We don’t count it sin, though we find release
From oh, such an image–
It scares me to think that someday
I may see Him!  I may see Him!

God is great, and God is good,
We thank Him ev’ry day.
He gives us life, He gives us food,
But if He came to stay
Would we let Him live with us?
Would we let Him reign?
He once died as Jesus;
Would He die again?

In a quiet sunset His glory shows,
But we haven’t learned yet, and may never know
Oh, such an image–
It scares me to think that someday
I may see Him!  I may see Him!

In a mirror dimly we can see His face.
He is God most holy; His image we can trace,
But oh, what an image–
It scares me to think that someday
I may see Him!  I may see Him
Face to face,
Face to face.

*****

Previous web log song posts:

#301:  The Song “Holocaust” | #307:  The Song “Time Bomb” | #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal” | #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods” | #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe” | #320:  The Song “Free” | #322:  The Song “Voices” | #326:  The Song “Mountain, Mountain” | #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice” | #334:  The Song “Convinced” | #337:  The Song “Selfish Love” | #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul” | #341:  The Song “Joined Together” | #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them” | #349: The Song “I Can’t Resist You’re Love” | #353:  The Song “I Use to Think” | #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good” | #362:  The Song “My Life to You” | #366:  The Song “Sometimes” | #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom” | #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy” | #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice” | #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good” | #393:  The Song “Why” | #399:  The Song “Look Around You” | #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command” | #408:  The Song “Given You My Name” | #412:  The Song “When I Think” | #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me” | #428:  The Song “To the Victor” | #433:  The Song “From Job” | #436:  The Song “Trust Him Again” | #438:  The Song “Even You” | #441:  The Song “Fork in the Road” | #442:  The Song “Call to Worship” | #445:  The Song “How Many Times” | #447:  The Song “When I Was Lonely” | #450:  The Song “Rainy Days” | #453:  The Song “Never Alone” | #455:  The Song “King of Glory” | #457:  The Song “Greater Love” | #458:  The Song “All I Need” | #462:  The Song “John Three” | #464:  The Song “The Secret”

Next Song: Present Your Bodies

465: Believing in Ghosts

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #465, on the subject of Believing in Ghosts.

In Matthew 14:26 we are told that the disciples, caught in a storm on the water, saw Jesus walking on the waves coming toward them and thought He was a ghost.  (We find the same statement in Mark 6:49.)  This raised a question:  Did they believe in ghosts?  Do we?  Should we?

I recently heard a comedienne comment that
she had figured out that ghosts were
people who died trying to fold a fitted bedsheet.

The question was raised by a long-time friend and reader who sometimes brings questions about the Bible and faith to me (notably, the question about The Abomination of Desolation).  I had recently commented in an article elsewhere that many people do believe in ghosts, and not just those who, like the cowardly lion, are faced with frightening events they don’t understand.  Our world even has professional ghost hunters who are fully persuaded that there is something real about these phenomena, and that they know what it is.

Of course, we have many who disbelieve, as well.  C. S. Lewis commented (in Miracles:  A Preliminary Study) that he knew someone who had actually seen a ghost, but that the witness did not believe in ghosts either before or after that sighting.

The Greek word in this passage is the one from which we get the word “phantasm”, and etymologically derives from a word for light to suggest something that appears, something that can be seen but has no substance.  “Ghost” is a good translation for it.  It is not used in any other passage in the New Testament, but it fits here quite well:  if you were in a small fishing boat on an inland sea in a storm, and through the rain and the winds you thought you saw a person striding atop the waves, you would be fairly certain it could not be a physical body and so probably identify it as some kind of spirit entity.  That, though, begs the question:  did they believe this was what we normally identify as a “ghost”, that is, the spirit of a departed person?  That matters to my questioner, because he was concerned about the Old Testament proscriptions against communicating with the dead.  The fact that they recognized something as an apparation does not necessarily mean they believed it to be a ghost in that sense.

Also, what they believed might not be relevant.  After all, in this case we know they were wrong–what they saw was not a ghost, but the living, breathing body of Jesus walking on the water.  The fact that they may have believed ghosts to exist when faced with something they did not understand does not mean that ghosts actually do exist.

On the other hand, it is difficult to read I Samuel 28, where King Saul visits a woman in Endor said to have the ability to contact the dead, and so has her connect him with the spirit of the deceased prophet, and not conclude that the Bible appears to teach some kind of survival of the spirits of the dead in some form.  That’s not quite the same thing as a spirit roaming the world or haunting its locale, but it is something we might call a ghost.  A belief in ghosts is not opposed to our faith.

And those prohibitions don’t say we can’t believe ghosts are real; it says we shouldn’t have any contact with them.  The prohibition against communicating with the dead would be rather foolish if it were not possible, and although it might be reduced to a command not to allow anyone to dupe you into believing you were speaking to the departed, that’s not the feeling we get from it.  It is certainly within the realm of our faith that we could believe in ghosts and keep our distance from them.

Again, though, many of prohibitions in the Old Testament Law were targeting the religions of other nations, and this has the hallmarks of one of them.  Ancestor worship was a common practice, and witches were people who sought to contact spirits other than God, which included demons and angels but also those of the departed, as part of religious practice.  We don’t contact spirits other than God because there is no good reason to do so.  As I have said in my book Why I Believe, there might be many spirits out there, but we are not well equipped to determine which ones might be benign and which might have motivations for compromising us in ways that make sense in a spirit realm beyond our understanding.  It is better to stay clear of ghosts and apparitions and spirits, simply because we can’t know which ones can be trusted.  It might seem nice enough, but then even among humans the ones who seem nice enough are frequently the con artists and sometimes the serial killers.

I don’t believe Christians either must or must not believe in the existence of ghosts, and in our grace-based lives it is not particularly relevant whether we have any contact with them.  What the original disciples believed about ghosts is similarly not relevant to what we should believe about them.  What matters is that our trust is in God, and not in spirits no matter who or what they claim to be.  It is better to stay clear of any such spirit, not because it is dangerous but because we don’t know what it is or what its motivation might be, and if it tells us things we don’t already know, we can’t know when it lies.

I’m not sure whether this answers the question completely, but I hope it helps.

464: The Song “The Secret”

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #464, on the subject of The Song “The Secret”.

I sing this song from time to time in my solo concerts, but not that often–people just don’t seem to get it.

I remember that the first person for whom I sang it was Jeff Zurheide, in Evans Hall at Gordon College, so it must have been 1975 or 6, not later than 78.  He stared at me, and said that he thought I was going to end by saying that if you couldn’t do all those things just ask Jesus and he’ll help you do them.  That, of course, is not how it ends.  I played it some time later for Phil Keaggy, who was not really expecting someone to walk up to him after a concert carrying a guitar and singing a song, and all he said was it was interesting.

It comes from a silly saying, that there are two ways to get to heaven.  One was to be sinlessly perfect your entire life, and the other was the right way.  That’s what I wanted to capture with this.

This is another vocals-over-midi-instruments recording.  Although it sounds as if the eleventh and twelfth commandments are the two given as the most important by Jesus, they were references to two commandments I’d heard in my teens, Thou shalt not hassle and Thou shalt not sweat.  There actually were scripture references to support those, but I’m not sure what they were.  The point was to make the requirements seem as impossible to keep as they are.  Someone commented that they appreciated the shift near the end from the “never” rules to the “always” rules, that more was required than simply refraining from evil, that some positive good was part of it.

The Secret.

So here are the lyrics.

Everybody wants to know the secret;
Ev’ryone is looking for a way.
People tell us how to get to heaven,
But they disagree in what they say.

Some men say sincerity
Will pay the price of liberty,
But people make mistakes when they’re sincere.
Some men tell you to believe
Anything you do believe,
But that doesn’t seem to be quite clear.

I’ve waded through the answers;
I’ve found the one that’s true,
So if you’ll stop and listen,
I’ll pass it on to you.

God expects perfection from your birth until your death.
This is all you really have to do:
Keep your whole life perfect with your ev’ry passing breath.
This is what the Lord expects of you:

Keep the ten commandments, the eleventh, and the twelfth;
Love the Lord above all else,
And love your neighbor as yourself,
Show kindness to your enemy,
And give to all abundantly.
Never hate a man, never tell a lie,
Never doubt the truth, never question why,
Always bear the pain, always take the time,
Always keep the law, always stay in line.
Then perhaps you’ll make it to his throne;
Then perhaps you’ll make it on your own.

But if you’ve any trouble, there’s a better way:
Turn around and give your life to Christ,
And God will touch you with His power, and starting from that day
He’ll give to you a brand new kind of life.

Yes, if you’ve any trouble, there’s a better way:
Turn around and give your life to Christ,
And God will touch you with His power, and starting from that day
He’ll give to you a brand new kind of life.

*****

Previous web log song posts:

#301:  The Song “Holocaust” | #307:  The Song “Time Bomb” | #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal” | #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods” | #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe” | #320:  The Song “Free” | #322:  The Song “Voices” | #326:  The Song “Mountain, Mountain” | #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice” | #334:  The Song “Convinced” | #337:  The Song “Selfish Love” | #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul” | #341:  The Song “Joined Together” | #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them” | #349: The Song “I Can’t Resist You’re Love” | #353:  The Song “I Use to Think” | #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good” | #362:  The Song “My Life to You” | #366:  The Song “Sometimes” | #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom” | #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy” | #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice” | #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good” | #393:  The Song “Why” | #399:  The Song “Look Around You” | #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command” | #408:  The Song “Given You My Name” | #412:  The Song “When I Think” | #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me” | #428:  The Song “To the Victor” | #433:  The Song “From Job” | #436:  The Song “Trust Him Again” | #438:  The Song “Even You” | #441:  The Song “Fork in the Road” | #442:  The Song “Call to Worship” | #445:  The Song “How Many Times” | #447:  The Song “When I Was Lonely” | #450:  The Song “Rainy Days” | #453:  The Song “Never Alone” | #455:  The Song “King of Glory” | #457:  The Song “Greater Love” | #458:  The Song “All I Need” | #462:  The Song “John Three”

Next song: In a Mirror Dimly